Borderlands has always been a franchise I was pretty fond of. Many playthroughs of 1&2 were a core part of my gaming childhood and while I've played those so much that the thought of doing them again is dreadful I will always appreciate my time with them. Later entries have previously gotten weaker and weaker but still pretty good by my book. Seeing a new direction for the series sounded like a great idea, and Tiny Tina of course is one of the better characters. So I was very hopeful for this. Unfortunately I believe Tiny Tina's Wonderlands the weakest yet.

The premise of this is great. Borderlands 2 had some awesome dlcs and Bunkers & Badasses was the pretty clear standout. I have never had any interest in tabletop games but the way they try to translate it to the game is fun and a good expansion on the original dlc. The overworld is the biggest divergence from mainline and for the most part its a neat way to get across the map. A lot of optional dungeons you can do for loot or to collect shrine pieces which if you find all the pieces for a certain shrine will give you a nice bonus. But this overworld has a critical flaw with how it spawns enemies. You can punch them and they'll vanish but if you're distracted (they usually spawn really close) You'll get sucked into an entire combat arena with multiple enemies and no chance to escape. None of these fights are hard or worth the exp though so it is just a forced waste of time. This is especially annoying in co-op. They pop up so often that halfway through the game it had completely soured me on the concept of the overworld.

Speaking of co-op, oof man. I played the entirety of this in co-op with my boyfriend and I think the game would of been very boring without that but jesus christ I am not even exagerating when I said this game crashed on me probably at least fifty separate times over our playthrough. Nearly all of these crashes were upon me opening my menu. I'll tell you, playing an rpg and being too scared to open your fucking inventory was very annoying. I'm not sure what caused this but it definitely dropped my enjoyment considerably. Although, I can't really say Id have much better thoughts about it otherwise.

The combat in this is fine, it's mostly standard borderlands. Melee weapons get to be improved a little and now you can combine two classes of your choosing but I didn't get much use out of either. When battles are hectic and you have the right gear its a good gameplay loop, but thats typical for the series. You use spells instead of grenades which can be fun as well but its really a mix bag. There is a staggering amount of loot dropped in this game but basically all of it is useless. You can find die across the levels to supposedly increase your luck but these were almost always worthless as well. We got some pretty strong weapons now and then but everything is basically junk and only worth selling. But the prices for inventory upgrades and spacing out of vending machines just makes everything feel like a really unnecessary hassle. Combine that with levels and sidequests that just drag on and on, this was an experience that was pretty dull for most of its run time. What makes all of that infinitely worse though is that strangely so much of this game has like absolutely zero music? The bgm is just straight up non existent except for the same handful of songs in battles or towns now and then. It's really damn noticeable. Of course there is a bigger reason why all of these feel as long as they are.

The story sucks. Tina is great obviously and there's some fun performances from Andy Samberg and Will Arnett but wow man. There is basically a new character introduced every mission and all of them are very forgettable. The game did make me laugh out loud a few times but so much of it had me stonefaced. The humor of the first few games was dumb but it was the right kind of dumb and now with this and Borderlands 3 it just feels painful. The bigger this franchise has become (and especially in this with the absence of Anthony Burch), the writing quality has dropped significantly and his absence is incredibly noticeable. The side quests arent much better. Some are fun concepts like exploring a house while shrunken but most of them are just glorified fetch quests with you guessed it, more annoying and forgettable characters guiding you through. One saving grace though is that the levels from an aesthetic standpoint are really great, especially the dried out deep trenches - most locations look really pretty and fits the setting quite well.

In the end, I have a lot of negative opinions on this game, probably more than the positive ones so maybe my rating feels a bit generous, but idk. I can feel that they really wanted to try with this. There is some passion in there its not all just gearbox greed. That's what I want to believe, at least. There's a message from the devs in the credits that talks about tough development because of COVID. The message kinda reads like a copout, a little pleading face emoji to say please forgive us for not making a good game. I want to believe its genuine. Apparently this game sold well enough that its gonna become its own franchise. I guess we'll have to see.

Borderlands was a series that me and my dad played together a lot, and I have good memories of the times with him. We're not on speaking terms at the moment and quite frankly I doubt we'll ever be. In a way that sours all my memories, makes me sad to look back on them and know its never gonna be like that again. It can't be. Playing this with @Assenemy helped with that a lot I think. Despite the crashes and the dragged out levels and the dead silent bgm, I had a really good time playing this even if we had to make our own fun by making fun of what was happening or doing silly things like cancelling fast travel or going up an elevator without the other person. I will always be appreciative of this game for that. I look forward to the future of this series and making new Borderlands memories, as silly as it or they may be.

Thanks for reading <3

Trophy Completion - 79% (35/39)
Time Played: 36 hours 9 minutes
Nancymeter - 64/100
Game Completion #132 of 2022
October Completion #9

Clickbait intro: Game so bad it makes notorious diehard videogame preservationist pray that it's lost to the sands of time.

You know, I had about 1400~ words of an incomplete real review typed up for this one, but I tabbed back in to keep playing and just.

Man.

I try to be fair to the games I play, even if they're ass. I like to sit with them, ponder them on my morning walks, look into their creation. I believe that all art contains a variable amount of love and that love should be, if not appreciated, at least acknowledged. I think games are art, and my desire to treat them the same way I've treated music for decades is what made me create this Backloggd account in the first place.

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands makes me wish I reneged on that personal promise.

It's difficult to describe this term using language, because the game just feels like pure hate. So much of it is steeped in contempt for someone or something that it actually borders on staggering.

If you care enough about videogames to even use Backloggd you probably already know about Borderlands Humor so I'm not gonna devote a mini essay to it. I'm also not gonna pretend I never liked Borderlands; up until around 2018 Borderlands 2 was a game I'd replay yearly.

Borderlands humor now grates on me in my old age, but the jokes at least have setup and punchlines even if those punchlines are of debatable... everything.

Wonderlands' jokes confound me, because oftentimes the punchline is "a thing exists". It has all the same energy of your debatably conservative uncle nudging you with his elbow at a wedding party and saying "Polish people, right?" except it's some quip about tabletop game/player stereotypes that the writer found by going on Tumblr and sifting through the TTRPG tags.
At least 95% of the dialogue in this game is jokes like this, or orphaned punchlines that feel as though they're responding to a nonexistent setup.
The other 5% is... Dated. Borderlands humor gets even more dated as each entry comes out and betrays the sad, unmoving time capsule that the directors live in, but Wonderlands is somehow worse than the prior entry because it feels like it came fresh out of 2012. I only played Portal 2 a month or so ago and this game could've been its contemporary.

I know riffing on a Gearbox title for not being funny is a bit redundant, it's like riffing on Gears of War for having cover or riffing on Skyrim for having dragon shouts or riffing on Halo for having Spartans or riffing on Baldur's Gate 3 for being bad. But I dunno, this game came out in 2022 and it's somehow a step backwards from everything before it. It boggles the mind. Even as I type this I find myself endlessly confused, wondering who they used as focus testers that anything in this game writing-wise got approval.

I think the sticking point for me is that this game is very ostensibly a parody of tabletop games and tabletop gamers, but there's a bit too much venom for me to really call it a parody. Many of the TTRPG related jokes feel mean-spirited and cheap, not unlike the Saints Row reboot. These don't feel like jokes for tabletop players, they feel like jokes about tabletop players.
The ones that aren't mean feel very... "How do you do, fellow kids?", to the point where even calling them "Reddit-like" is inaccurate

The spiel about games and love up above wasn't just a fillerbuster, it's something I genuinely have been pondering this entire time.

Wonderlands doesn't feel like it was made with any love.

I question who or what the target audience for this game looks like because just from observing the text, I get the feeling it just fucking hates everybody? It clearly has no love for tabletop players given both them and their hobby are the butt of the joke, it has no love for Borderlands players either because its parent series is barely present and is only wheeled out to keep the player awake, and it clearly has no love for sensible people because it forces you to listen to Ashly Burch's ulcer-bustingly racist Tiny Tina voice for a full game's runtime.

What really confounds me is just how desperate the game is, though.

In 2013, they already did this game. It was a DLC for Borderlands 2 titled "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep" and it was... Okay, I suppose. I'm not the biggest fan of BL2's DLC for numerous reasons, but it was this game down a T except with like... Not even better writing, it had writing to begin with.
I harp on the jokes so much because that's basically all this game has, besides Will Arnett phoning in a performance to get a paycheck now that the Arrested Development and Bojack Horseman mines dried up.
There's a story which, prior to playing the game, I'd seen hyped up as "Better than BL3's". After playing it, I wondered if I'd bought a secret copy that lacked any plot, because there basically isn't on.

Wonderlands does have gameplay which, as is the running theme here, is just BL3's but infinitely worse. God I miss Moze. What were they even cooking here? Were BL fans begging for less interesting gameplay?

All in all, I am struggling to come up with a meaningful conclusion here, or even say anything nice. Saying "it's just bad" is boring, and something any goblin with a keyboard can tell you over in the Steam reviews, but... It's just bad, dude. I got this game for £12 and I'm genuinely regretting not using it to get a nice haul from Greggs. A pack of sausage rolls for the fridge, a Mexican chicken oval bite for the evening and a packet of their spicy chicken bites for lunch... Mmm.

Some people, usually Bloodborne fans for some reason, will tell you that they wish they could wipe their memory and play a game for the first time all over again.

I wish I could wipe this game from my memory.

Which, given the next Honkai Star Rail update is all about memory, sure does feel prophetic.

Well, this was kind of disappointing. Tina is a great character and turning a small DLC into a full game surprisingly worked pretty well with fun ties to tabletop rpgs, but as a whole its just pretty lackluster. Outside of the aforementioned Tina, the villain and a few others, there aren't many interesting characters. The gameplay seems a bit of a step back from Borderlands 3, there's spells and class matching which is fun but the shooting itself feels kind off and the weapons honestly arent great. Plus, some of the side missions drag on and on and with basically no background music things can get dull very quickly

Wonderlands tem muito tempo da melhor personagem de toda a série pra mim(tina). Ashly burch faz muito bem a voz dela, com certeza ela deve amar a personagem,gosto muito dessa dubladora. O jogo começa bom, com uma boa criatividade nos mapas, assim como foi na DLC do 2. Tem boas side quests, e eu gostei do mapa da mesa. A gameplay não muda tanto, tem mais magia e menos armas de fogo, normal pra um jogo que beira mais a fantasia e o RPG. Acho bastante coisa aqui melhor que o 3, principalmente parece ter mais cuidado, mais polido, apesar do desenvolvimento ter tido problemas com a pandemia. Porém também sofre de alguns problemas que o 3 e outros tiveram, como ter que farmar as vezes pra terminar a campanha, personagens inúteis lendo uma biblia no meio da missão,etc... No geral é divertido, principalmente pra quem é fã da franquia. Franquia que ja apresenta sinais de cansaço desde o pre sequel...


Alguns pontos a destacar

Positivos:
-Mapas criativos, boas(algumas) side quests
-Tina
-Mapa da mesa
-Otimização ok/FSR 2 bem implementado

Contras:
-Excesso de dialogos ruins/sem graça(no 3 tem muito mais)
-Precisar farmar pra fazer as missões da campanha, principalmente na parte final.
-Campanha principal poderia ser menor
-Trilha sonora

The promise? A full game’s worth of the stand-out Borderlands 2 DLC: Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep.

The reality? A Borderlands 3 expand-alone title with a D&D skin.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to love here. The franchise’s first foray into true character creation is way better than it has any right to be. There are some standout performances from Ashley Birch (duh) along with Wanda Sykes and Andy Samberg of all people. The multi-class system is novel enough to propel even the most series-weary veteran Borderlands player through leveling a character. The Borderlands riffing on D&D is generally solid and at times downright delightful–the overworld map being the actual tabletop the game is being played on was a surprising treat, cheetos and all.

Wonderlands succeeds where prior entries in the series succeeded and fails where they failed. The game is a bit too long considering how little it iterates after the first 10 or so hours. There’s a running theory that certain areas in the game were originally intended for a DLC model similar to other Borderlands titles but were added to ensure the game had a certain length/amount of content. I’m tempted to believe this theory because these areas are easy to pick out as largely separate from the critical path and the post-launch DLC for the game consists of some updates to the Diablo rift-like “chaos chamber” system and a few single area dungeons (10-minute runtimes meant to be replayed). It may be apples and oranges, but comparing this title to the last similar attempt, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, it falls a bit flat. The story is less compelling than the bit (lol borderlands but d20s, get it?), things are a bit too long, and the DLC doubles down rather than expanding or correcting. These flaws don’t make it a bad game. But they keep it firmly out of the “great” category.

Eu amo Borderlands, então sempre tenho uma expectativa alta com qualquer jogo da franquia. Esperava a DLC da Tina do Borderlands 2, mas ultra melhorada. Confesso que me decepcionei um pouco. Vou logo pra conclusão sobre o jogo: é um jogo com um ENORME potencial desperdiçado. Se você é fã de D&D ou fã de Borderlands, vai curtir muito a história e mais um capítulo da construção de personagem excepcional da Tina. As piadinhas e referências seguem perfeitas e a história como um todo, apesar de curta, traz essa evolução da personagem e conexão com o universo Borderlands. Claro que por ser uma história "lateral", não temos evolução no enredo atual do jogo.
De qualquer forma, pelo fato da história ser curta (apesar de envolvente), poderia facilmente ter sido uma DLC de um Borderlands 3, por exemplo.Talvez seja o fato do jogo ter sido produzido durante a pandemia que traga também esse ar de DLC, mas não havia necessidade de ser um standalone. Falando em pandemia, lindíssima a mensagem passada no final do jogo, em um momento tão delicado para nós, como humanidade mesmo.
Por fim, a gameplay segue classe A, com a tela menos poluída, fluidez e ofertando muita diversão.
Agora vamos falar das coisas ruins. A franquia é conhecida por diversos motivos, sendo um deles o fator replay. Quem é aficcionado por ela, curte poder testar as várias classes diferentes, as trocentas armas disponíveis, variações de builds e chegar num ponto de min/max pra se tornar o mais OP possível. Aí que começam os problemas. Borderlands sempre teve o farm de itens como peça chave pra você pegar as armas e itens mais poderosos e se tornar um deus do joguinho. O que fizeram? Meteram praticamente todos os itens lendários dentro da mesma lootpool. Você quer farmar um item específico como fazia num Borderlands 2, por exemplo, e acha que é só ir em determinado boss que ele vai dropar? Não. Ta praticamente tudo como world drop, o que diminui consideravelmente suas chances de encontrar o que você mais quer.
Isso nos leva a outro problema relacionado ao fator replay, que é o endgame. Você termina a história e aí? Tem que ter arenas, raid boss, DLCs fantásticas, coisas a mais pra você fazer e seguir jogando com seu personagem. No entanto, tudo que encontramos são a Câmara do Caos e DLCs pífias. A Câmara do Caos nada mais é que uma repetição das Dungeons do jogo, enfrentando inimigos atrás de inimigos, aumentando a dificuldade com modificadores e no final, um boss. O loot fica mais forte, mas você cai na mesmice rapidamente e não da vontade de passar do Caos Level 20. Até porque, daí em diante você já tem que começar o min/max e aí caímos naquele problema do farm de itens.
A história das DLCs é até interessante em certo ponto, mas extremamente rasa. O conteúdo é pior ainda. 4 "mapas" em que você NOVAMENTE está na mesmice das Dungeons, matar inimigos até a próxima sala e enfrentar um boss final. O pior é que você tem que terminar cada mapa pelo menos 4 VEZES pra poder liberar todas as conquistas. Extremamente repetitivo e chato.

Sem me estender muito mais, jogue o joguinho. Curta a história, curta as piadas, curta as referências. Se tiver paciência, fique para ver a cagada colossal que fizeram com o endgame desse jogo. Depois que cansar, não se sinta culpado por largar o jogo no esquecimento, não vale a pena platinar. Se um dia der saudade ou vontade (ou aparecer um amigo pra jogar com você), teste outras classes e divirta-se.

If you want more Borderlands, here’s more Borderlands. The shooting is as satisfying as ever. The looting is still addictive despite legendaries not really standing out. But outside of the slick silky smooth movement and gun play, it’s a pretty sub par experience.

The writing. Here’s one of my biggest gripes with this game. Characters talk sooooooo bloody much in this game. I play with sub titles on and my god some of those subtitles were book length. And due to the constant humour in the writing, despite a lot being said it feels like nothing is actually being said. It’s a whole lot of pointless constant babbling. There is also so many jokes thrown your way and barely any of them landed with me which I found quite awkward.

The gunplay is fun and satisfying but the enemy variety is extremely lacking. None of this games enemies felt any different to fight against. In previous games the skags have a different weak spot to the spider ants. Loader bots have a smaller weak spot and have different units, units that require you to prioritise them in battle. Units that repair them mid fight. But in this game you never have to change up tactics. It’s just aim and shoot, everything fights and dies the same. The game is also extremely easy. Even playing on the hardest available setting from the beginning of the game it got to the point where me and my partner were just melting enemies. Bosses would die upon spawning in. We had no where near the most optimised character builds so god help the enemies if your a player who is on top of that. It’s this easy difficulty combined with boring combat encounters and extremely boring constant chatting that really made this game drag.

The dedicated 3 skill trees per character were dropped for a system that allows you to pick 1 permanent class and a second class later on. You can change the second class once you beat the game. Upon release I thought this offered great potential but now after completing the game I find that actually it’s rather narrow when compared to other games in the series. Only being able to progress halfway down the second tree really doesn’t help.

Also I am very grateful to any game offering full splitscreen Co-op. I played this game start to finish with my partner. She’s also a fan of Borderlands. But the co-op experience came with some downsides. The second screen doesn’t get sun titles. So when the characters are hurling constant blabber our way, she sometimes didn’t know what was being said over the gunfire and explosions. Also quest objectives don’t show on the second screen, so she never really knew what we were doing without me telling her. Despite not knowing she didn’t have to do much guessing because every single quest in this game is press square on something or shoot something.

Talking about the quests. None stand out now I think back to the game. None of the characters are memorable. None tell any interesting little side stories. It was just more of the main quest, shoot stuff and shoot more stuff.

The driving around the open world sections have been replaced with a table top you navigate on foot. This area was quite buggy. Quite often the camera would get stuck zoomed in on my character after talking to an NPC. I wasn’t a fan of this version of traversing the world since the vehicles offer a change in gameplay, with that gone in this game, all you ever do is run and shoot.

This is a mainly negative critique so let’s end on some positives. The visuals popped and were very fun. The amount of variety in level design was very welcome and the colour palette was great. The character customisation is brilliant. Really allowing you to get in there and tweak everything. I ain’t sure if I will be playing borderlands 4 having now become a little tired of the formula but I really hope they keep and improve upon this character creation system.

Not nearly as good as Assault on Dragon Keep, and just like the normal game from Borderlands 3, it's carried by the gameplay.

The Good: Melee combat is really good and fun, the spells are a worthy replacement for grenades, and I think they are 100% better, weapon variation is as good as ever, the gunplay is flawless, the easter eggs are awesome, they are usually the best missions in the game, Mr. Torgue being in this game is also perfect, I enjoyed the Overworld and these incopetent writers from Gearbox were finally able to create a good villain.

The Bad: I didn't like the enviroments, they feel too overdesigned, which is a recurring problem with this game, the classes are really boring and having 1 skill tree each is annoying and doesn't encourage variation, the story is pretty bland and boring, almost all new characters are annoying and cringe.

The Ugly: The entire UI is dreadful, HORRIBLE to look at because it's too OVERDESIGNED, too many details that just hinders comparing gear and using the minimap for example. The endgame is also a joke, chaos chambers are boring as hell, and that is the only good farming spot, just awful.

Please refer to @Nancyfly's review for a more detailed review, our thoughts are largely the same.
Nancy's Review

Only key difference: I had the added benefit of being able to open my inventory but 99% of the time it was only to discard loot and replace it with higher value loot ... This game works really hard to live up to its Looter Shooter genre by just drowning you in dogshit. Level 40 enemies dropping weapons worth 10% of the shit you found in a dirt pile on the way there, very cool.

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a game I wanted to enjoy since the first announcement but I had always been cautious about getting excited about it after the disappointment that was Borderlands 3. I was very pleased with this game, it felt like a major improvement over the previous outing (even if it is a "different" IP).
The maps were much better designed with the more linear levels being reduced to much shorter outings only towards the end of the game. I also think this game is much better written than 3 and all the celebrity actors sounded like they were having a blast delivering these lines. Tt makes a lot of smart improvements I would like to see carried out back in the next Borderlands installment. Having a dedicated melee slot makes loot drops even more exciting and allows your kit to be fleshed out even further as well as with the addition of being able to multiclass. I would like to see something similar to that system brought back to Borderlands because it allows for a much more diverse path for building out characters and actually makes me excited to run the game back in the upcoming years. Spells were an awesome addition and I would like to an option as diverse (more than just the standard grenade) in the mainline series as well. Seeing your player model change as you level up was also a really cool touch I didn't expect and being allowed to erect statues of yourself and party around town gave a better sense of progression than any other Borderlands game.
Complaints wise- this game is way too easy, even with 4 players the challenge run dungeons required very little thought (we hadn't reached max chaos level however so maybe it does get harder) but even without those the campaign bosses took no longer than 45 seconds for us to clear. The player is also given less freedom on how to spend their hard earned gold in this spin-off, while the past installments had slot machines and customization options, all of that has been reduced to just ammo capacity and backpack expansions as well as buying new guns out of vending machines. This made returning to the "hub" way less exciting. I have also heard that the DLC for this game is very poor and overpriced, I have not yet purchased it and cannot comment on that (but I would definitely believe it).

TLDR: Fun entry and more optimistic for where the franchise goes from here than I was previously.

Sights & Sounds
- I've always enjoyed the look of Borderlands franchise games. Something about the heavy outlines wrapped around the bright colors and little details just looks sharp to me
- This game, however, features a nice fantasy coat of paint courtesy of the game's central conceit of taking place within a TTRPG. Some of the environments (and especially the world map) look great
- It's a Borderlands title, so you're primarily just going to be hearing gunfire, explosions, and silly character/enemy lines most of the time. When you do hear the music, it'll be the same exciting electronic music you'd associate with any title in the series
- The voice work is pretty good, but if you find Tiny Tina (Ashley Burch) annoying, you're going to have a really bad time

Story & Vibes
- Ugh. It's a Borderlands title. Of course the writing is bad and the story is dumb
- There's a bad guy. You set off on a journey to fight the bad guy. Borderlands zaniness™ happens. The people playing the TTRPG have a fight and you need to fix it. You make everyone friends again and fight the bad guy. End
- At least Will Arnett shows up as the voice of the antagonist to soften the blow

Playability & Replayability
- Take the gameplay of any other borderlands game and swap out grenades for wands. Congrats, you've made Wonderlands!
- Glibness aside, there is one interesting mechanical addition for builds that bears mentioning: dual-classing. This opens up some interesting build possibilities in theory, but almost every build I made wound up playing about the same
- The cardinal sin this game commits is having horrible endgame content. The Chaos chamber got old after a dozen or so runs. Every other game in this franchise had fun stuff to do after finishing the game, but Wonderlands ends with a wet fart

Overall Impressions
- This game had so much potential. I liked the "What if Borderlands, but fantasy?" look and feel of the game, and the gunplay is the same as ever. But when balancing kills build variety, what was the point in the first place? It's a co-op game; some lack of balance isn't the worst thing. And why the lack of endgame? There's no reason to revisit the awful story
- It ran okay outside of a little choppiness when there were too many explosions happening at once

Final Verdict
- 2.5/10. This is a low point for the BL series and a roundly disappointing title for fans. It could have been a fun change of pace, but just go back to BL2 or BL3 instead

Actually dire.

It's borderlands, but somehow less funny and boring. Constant voice noise, bland gameplay and quest objectives like "watch x" or "listen to y" whilst standing still staring at a poorly animated character model


If you're a fan of BL3 - Why? But also, just play that.

If you're not - don't play it.

In summary; don't play it.

What a game for sure, I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this. Borderlands as a whole in my opinion needs a complete overhaul as a game series.

I'm not sure if they need to turn to a more streamlined single-player story (Uncharted/Last Of Us) or change how they present their combat (Yakuza 7 turning into a turn-based RPG instead of a more open-style combat).

I did use certain mods before watching reviews of the game and I'm glad I did. I found everything the game presented lackluster and boring. 4-5 types of enemies which each have maybe another 3-4 different types (here's a skeleton now here's a skeleton but he uses magic)

Even getting low-level legendaries I still found them uninteresting to use compared to some of the weapons 2 and even 3 had in their games. But all this being said there were points where I was having fun despite finding the game quite boring

I couldn't tell you any endearing moments with any of the characters, and I found it very confusing that they went with 90% new characters rather than just importing 4-5 games worth of characters (BL1/2/3/Pre Sequal + Tales from the BL) I also thought Andy Samberg and Wanda Sykes were super weird to be in a game like this

I will praise the game on the quality of their side quests as there were multiple times where I forgot the objective I was currently working on had no part of the main story but still felt as and at sometimes more detailed than the main story

I also am split on the multiclass system as it holds to the DnD system now but I think if you were gonna do the multiclass you should have given us full-fledged skill trees as in the "main series" games but in Wonderlands it feels like they just either took one skill tree out of three or melded all three into one skill tree so you miss out on a lot more customization

The game I think is worth a purchase if you can get it on sale as I don't think the game is worth 60$ and you can skip the DLC unless you have a group to play with who are diehard BL fans as all the DLC is endgame loot dungeons with difficulty customization

First off let me say I've played all the main Borderland games and I liked them as a co-op experience, but I'd never call myself really a fan of them, they were just considered fun at best, but nothing amazing.

But this one, I love this game, I had so much fun making my character and choosing a class and building it, I know you could do this in the other games, but I think what made it better is the character is yours instead of a Vault Hunter with abilities.

I ran the game as a Brr-zerker and only used melee weapons, and I'll say the game is completely viable to do with melee only, which I have to say was SUPER fun! I can't honestly speak on how good the guns or gun play really is, but the overall gameplay is very solid and fluent. It's still the looter shooter it was before, still ability upgrades, still the same stuff of the past games.

The world is actually pretty big, while it isn't the usually open world like the past games, it is something like free roaming instances, which at first I thought would be a downgrade, but honestly it was good, it fit the rest of the game.

I've never been a fan of the artstyle, but it does look good for what it is, the story is entertaining at times, I'm a fan of JRPGs but I know little about table top RPGs so some of the references likely flew over my head, but was never a distraction.

The music, I'll admit I barely heard it, likely because I played co-op with a friend and we had a great time, the co-op is solid, no lag, no server issues, just solid play.

I wish I could add to it more, but if you like the borderland series, I can't see why you wouldn't like this, unless you really don't like the TTRPG setting. I'm not a huge fan of the series, but this is my favorite of them all.

Borderlands for me has always been carried by its really great gameplay. Tiny Tina is really no different as, despite the DnD format, this is just another Borderlands game in the franchise with very little different.

Some of the DnD aspects for me just fell short of being all that interesting. It feels like nothing more than a coat of paint of the format with very little additions to differentiate it in a fun or interesting way.

On top of that, the gameplay itself just doesn't feel as good in this. Some of the mechanics just feel off while others are starting to feel a bit dated.

The game is also a lot buggier from my experience than previous games. I game crashes that was definitely in the double digits by the time I finished the game, this is with me playing the game Dec 2022, many months after the original launch.

The only thing that feels the same, unfortunately, is the writing. Borderlands writing is back, and if you don't like it, you won't like it here.

Usually the gameplay is more than enough to make up for the bad writing but unfortunately, with that being a few steps below what it was in Borderlands 3, the flaws are that much more apparent in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. The bells and whistles are just not enough of a distraction either. If the gameplay has worn thin and the writing is enough to turn you away from previous Borderlands games, this one won't change your mind in either department.

Once again, a couple hefty steps forward for the Borderlands franchise, another couple of steps back.

The gameplay is by far the best thing they've done with it, porting over the wonderful Borderlands 3 gunplay, working especially well with the PlayStation haptic triggers (if you use/like those which I so happen to like), as you wield hefty guns that have taken on new medival arrows that are launched at enemies...exactly like guns.

I think the gameplay deviates in a fun way from previous games, allowing you to multiclass, wield huge weapons, and equip all sorts of artifacts that can increase build cohesion much more than it did in Borderlands 2. You really have the opportunity to become a God with the right grinding, and I think it will make a lot of the fans of the franchise happy.

But there are plenty of gripes I have with gameplay. Borderlands 3 spammed legendaries at you nonstop, which I am happy to report, this game does not. Instead, this game sparsely rewards you with any, and the only way to increase the likelihood of getting one, is finding ultra hard collectibles hidden deep in the massive asscrack of these maps. Who thought this was a good idea? Just return it to Borderlands 1/2 drops, damn. On top of that, it seems this drop system also heavily favored artifacts and not-needed class mods instead of weapons, yknow, the thing Borderlands is known for. So get ready to collect all 240 hidden dice in super oversized maps if you want a decent shot at playing with the fun stuff!

Going now to the story, wow, we've really fallen from grace in this regard now, haven't we. We've gone from Borderlands 2 and Pre-Sequel, games with flawed but overall coherent stories, to Borderlands 3, which made Twitch streamers take Handsome Jack's place, and now...

Now, we're left with some stupid campaign that made me want to tear my ears off. Now almost 90% of the game is reference humor! So many epic jokes that have aged very well, like "sea shanties" (real funny guys) and "Left Shark" (oh my God guys that's like a decade old).

For the actual story, it's uh...it exists? It's really boring and serves no purpose until in the last 30 minutes, you basically have the whole thing laid out in a single meager cutscene. It's a clever twist/idea, but sadly, the past 15-20 hours of game has done nothing but kinda do "go from A-B, now B-C, now C-D" with no meanful moments or fun inbetween. They try, of course, but they fail every time.

Along with this, the "side quests" range from meaningless to overly flushed-out. There are some quests that take almost an hour of gameplay, usually hinged on a joke that just isn't funny (see: Reference Humor). Probably the worst offender is "The Ditcher", a quest nearly an hour in length while you get talked down to by a Geralt clone about what an asshole you are for causing some monster to escape, then setting up the boss fight for a whole hour, just for him to die and the boss to get killed in about 30-60 seconds if you actually care about your build.

The music is meh, jokes are lame, areas are great but again fall into that Borderlands 3 trap of making these huge open world maps that have so much wasted space (besides hiding 12490245102 collectibles in it because that's good game design :tm:)

Two steps forward, two steps back. About as painful as Borderlands 3, but just enough to make it "okay/good" in my eyes. Don't rush to grab this one.